Tired and Stumbling, Conte Struggles to Exit Italy Lockdown
A Tired and Stumbling Conte Struggles to Exit Italy’s Lockdown
(Bloomberg) --
Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, taken to task by critics for being slow to put Italy into a lockdown as the coronavirus outbreak struck, is now struggling to map a way out and restart the country’s crippled economy.
During a Sunday news conference to announce what many hoped would be a liberation from weeks of stringent restrictions, Conte struggled to outline strategy and risks before getting to what Italians really wanted to know: what comes next?
In the nearly 45 minute-long address, the Florence lawyer-turned-politician appeared drained, and stumbled repeatedly as he eventually unveiled a timetable for the so-called Phase 2 in Europe’s original virus epicenter.
The new rules, many the result of hard-fought negotiations with factions in his coalition, call for:
- Construction, manufacturing to resume on May 4
- Retailers, museums to reopen on May 18
- Bars, restaurants, hair salons to possibly reopen June 1
- Schools to remain shut until September
- Limited freedom of movement -- Italians have been virtually confined to their homes since early March -- though only within individual regions
Italian bonds and stocks climbed on relief that S&P Global Ratings left the nation’s credit rating unchanged, delaying the risk of a downgrade toward junk to later this year.
Ten-year bonds rallied for a fourth day, their longest winning streak in a month, and the benchmark FTSE MIB index rose to the highest in 10 days after S&P on Friday highlighted the country’s diversified and wealthy economy.
Conte’s hold on the emergency has been shaken by continual clashes with regional leaders, especially governors from the prosperous North, where businesses have pushed for a quicker end to the lockdown. He’s also been hamstrung by a bureaucratic tangle delaying pledged assistance to workers and small businesses.
At stake: preventing a recession that the government sees shrinking GDP by 8% this year in Europe’s fourth-biggest economy, which lagged behind its euro-area peers even before the pandemic struck.
Conte’s travails could point to a day of reckoning with his allies, possibly jeopardizing his second government’s stability, whenever the virus emergency ends. For now, the government’s popularity is at record highs in opinion polls and fractious parties like the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, the biggest force in his coalition, are hanging with him.
‘Maximum Caution’
Conte on Sunday stuck to his mantra of “maximum caution,” warning that if people fail to respect rules including social distancing, the curve of contagion “will rise and could get out of control, the number of our dead will increase and our economy will suffer irreversible damage.”
But Conte gave little or no indication on how the government would combine the reopening with measures to monitor and counter the spread of the virus as well as any new outbreaks, including testing and boosting health services.
Opposition leader Matteo Salvini of the anti-migrant League was among those who blamed Conte for inaction at the onset of the outbreak. And while Salvini has continued to lambaste Conte as he moves to loosen restrictions, now some of the premier’s allies have also joined in.
Conte’s junior coalition ally, the Italy Alive party of ex-premier Matteo Renzi, took issue with a continued ban on religious services, apart from funerals, in the Roman Catholic country.
“You can go to a museum but not celebrate a religious rite,” Equal Opportunity and Family Minister Elena Bonetti said in a tweet. “This decision is incomprehensible, it must be changed.” The continued ban on celebrating Mass is “absurd,” Agriculture Minister Teresa Bellanova echoed in an interview with la Repubblica, calling the reopening plan “not very courageous.” Both ministers are members of Renzi’s party.
The League’s Salvini, whose electoral stronghold is in the North, where the virus has hit hardest, vented his frustration on Monday. “We have waited, listened, suggested, collaborated,” Salvini said in a live Facebook video. “After 47 days of imprisonment we say: enough, let us out, to earn, to work.”
Still, polls show the emergency has hurt Salvini, as Italians rally around the government in Rome. Support for the League has plunged by almost 6%, according to an Ipsos poll published in daily Corriere della Sera.
Salvini’s center-right alliance would still win a general election, but there’s little prospect of a ballot anytime soon. If Conte stumbles further, one alternative would be a so-called government of national unity, including parties of the left and right. But that could lead to all-out paralysis given the two sides’ wide disagreements on policy -- and make the current administration look like a dynamic decision-making machine.
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.